Travels of Francois Coreal to the West Indies, Containing the Most Remarkable Things He has Seen on His Voyage from 1666 to 1697

Description

This three-volume work by a Spanish author of uncertain identity, Francisco (François) Coreal, was published in Amsterdam in 1722. It purports to be the French translation of a first-hand account, in Spanish, of multiple voyages to Brazil and Spanish America undertaken by Coreal over a span of 30 years, from 1666-97. Coreal's supposed voyages cover about half of the three volumes. The rest of the work is comprised of a heterogeneous set of texts taken from the travelogues of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) and several of his contemporaries. Many scholars believe that Coreal was a fictitious name for a writer who may never have traveled to the lands described in the book. This theory is supported by the fact that no Spanish original of the work has been found and that a great part of Coreal's narrative is plagiarized from an influential work of 1578 by the French explorer and writer Jean de Léry (1536-1613), Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil, autrement dite Amerique (History of a voyage to the land of Brazil, also called America). In some instances, Coreal expanded on Léry’s text by adding his own observations.